Resources, personal stories, communication techniques, and strategies for survivors of sexual abuse who are ready to break free from the past and return to their genuine self.

September 9, 2014

Understanding & Defining Ritual Abuse

This week, I am so excited to start a series brought to us by Neil Brick, founder of the S.M.A.R.T (Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today) newsletter and many conferences to address this very important area of abuse that sometimes goes ignored or is greatly understood. I am so pleased to have Neil sharing his insights about this topic and hope you will learn much from it! To get us started, I am sharing with you the information Neil submitted for the Wiki page on ritual abuse.

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Ritual abuse exists all over the world. There have been reports, journal
articles[1][2][3], web pages[4][5][6][7][8] and criminal convictions of crimes
against children and adults [9][10][11].

Definition

Ritual abuse has been defined as:

a brutal form of abuse of children, adolescents, and
adults, consisting of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, and involving
the use of rituals. Ritual does not necessarily mean satanic. However, most
survivors state that they were ritually abused as part of satanic worship for
the purpose of indoctrinating them into satanic beliefs and practices. Ritual
abuse rarely consists of a single episode. It usually involves repeated abuse
over an extended period of time. The physical abuse is severe, sometimes
including torture and killing. The sexual abuse is usually painful, sadistic,
and humiliating, intended as means of gaining dominance over the victim. The
psychological abuse is devastating and involves the use of
ritual/indoctrination, which includes mind control techniques and mind altering
drugs, and ritual/intimidation which conveys to the victim a profound terror of
the cult members and of the evil spirits they believe cult members can command.
Both during and after the abuse, most victims are in a state of terror, mind
control, and dissociation in which disclosure is exceedingly
difficult.[12]

and as

WHAT IS RITUAL ABUSE? (BROAD DEFINITION) Ritual abuse is
the abuse of a

child, weaker adult, or animal in a ritual setting or manner. In
a broad sense, many of our overtly or covertly socially sanctioned actions can
be seen as ritual abuse, such as military basic training, hazing, racism,
spanking children, and partner-battering. Some abuse is private...some public.
Public ritual abuse may be either open or secret.

WHAT IS RITUAL ABUSE? (NARROW
DEFINITION) The term ritual abuse is generally used to mean prolonged, extreme,
sadistic abuse, especially of children, within a group setting. The group's
ideology is used to justify the abuse, and abuse is used to teach the group's
ideology. The activities are kept secret from society at large, as they violate
norms and laws.[13]

Origins of the term

Pazder introduced the term "ritualized abuse" in 1980, describing the
experiences of an adult survivor that was disclosing satanic abuse memories. He
defined the phenomenon as "repeated physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual
assaults combined with a systematic use of symbols, ceremonies, and machinations
designed and orchestrated to attain malevolent effects." Later definitions came
mostly from professionals addressing ritual abuse in child care settings.
Finkelhor, Williams, Burns, and Kalinowski elaborated on Pazder's definition,
defining ritual abuse as "abuse that occurs in a context linked to some symbols
or group activity that have a religious, magical or supernatural connotation,
and where the invocation of these symbols or activities are repeated over time
and used to frighten and intimidate the children." Kelley referred to ritual
abuse as the "repetitive and systematic sexual, physical, and psychological
abuse of children by adults as part of cult or satanic worship"[14].

Evidence

There is a great deal of evidence supporting the existence of ritual abuse
crimes as a worldwide phenomenon. Bottoms, Shaver and Goodman found in their
1993 study evaluating ritual abuse claims that in 2,292 alleged ritual abuse
cases, 15% of the perpetrators in adult cases and 30% of the perpetrators in
child cases confessed to the abuse[15]. "In a survey of 2,709 members of the
American Psychological Association, it was found that 30 percent of these
professionals had seen cases of ritual or religion-related abuse (Bottoms,
Shaver & Goodman, 1991). Of those psychologists who have seen cases of
ritual abuse, 93 percent believed that the reported harm took place and 93
percent believed that the alleged ritualism occurred....The similar research of
Nancy Perry (1992) which further supports (the previous findings)…Perry also
conducted a national survey of therapists who work with clients with
dissociative disorders and she found that 88 percent of the 1,185 respondents
indicated ”belief in ritual abuse, involving mind control and
programming.”[16]

Recently an online survey[17] of over one thousand people answered
questions about ritual abuse and extreme abuse crimes. In a summary of the
survey [18], it was found that ritual abuse/mind control is a global phenomenon.
Fifty-five percent stated they were abuse in a Satanic cult. Seventy-seven
percent of the adult survivors that responded "had been threatened with death if
they ever talked about the abuse." Also, "257 respondents reported that secret
mind control experiments were used on them as children." Eighty-two percent
reported being sexually abused by multiple perpetrators.

Anne Johnson Davis in her book Hell Minus One reported that her parents
confessed to her abuse in writing and verbally to clergymen, and to the
detectives from the Utah Attorney General’s Office. Her suppressed memories
started when she was in her mid-30s, which were fully substantiated by her
mother and stepfather[19][20].

Many scientific journals articles have discussed the reality of ritual
abuse and its effect on its victims. Some of these articles have discussed the
extreme nature of these crimes[21], proof of the reality of the ritual abuse
phenomenon and victims' symptoms[22], the connection between ritual abuse,
multiple personality disorder and mind control[23] and the connections between
ritual abuse reports and the higher levels of symptoms of childhood sexual and
physical abuse[24]. Several additional studies and organizations have compiled
research on the reality of ritual abuse crimes[25][26][27].

Ritual abuse and mind control crimes have also been confirmed in other
books[28][29][30][31].

A study which identified 270 cases of sexual abuse in day care settings
found that allegations of ritual abuse occurred in thirteen percent of the
cases[32]. Additional evidence of ritual abuse in day care and child abuse cases
has been found in news reports, journal articles and legal
transcripts[33][34][35][36][37].

Ritual abuse occurrences have also been found in the Netherlands [38]and
the United Kingdom[39][40] [41] [42][43]. A ritual abuse case in the United
States in 2006 had a confession and convictions. The case included up to 25
children.[44]

Kent believes that intergenerational satanic accounts are possible and that
rituals related to them may come from a deviant interpretation of religious
texts[45][46]. Others have stated that the theories and research around
recovered memory "strongly confirm the reality of...cult abuse" of SRA
survivors[47].

Neil Brick is an advocate and researcher for survivors of child abuse.
He has worked for years to educate the public about child abuse. Neil Brick has
written many research papers on child abuse issues, including his Master's
thesis on how child abuse effects interpersonal relationships. Neil Brick runs
several Internet lists to help survivors of child abuse and their supporters.